Theater purists feel that film acting isn’t really acting, because the technical restrictions of doing take after take of each scene – sometimes performing small, isolated sections of scenes for the purposes of collecting a lot of coverage for the edit – prevent performers from really being able to sink their teeth into a role and immerse themselves in the mindset of a character.
Of course, there are plenty of breathtaking film performances that have proven those people wrong. Mickey Rourke’s performance in The Wrestler and Marion Cotillard’s performance in La Vie En Rose and Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance in The Aviator are as real as acting comes. The 2000s brought some of the best acting in film history.
10 Hilary Swank As Maggie Fitzgerald In Million Dollar Baby
Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby was sold to audiences as a female version of Rocky, but the movie itself is much more sobering and tragic than that. Halfway through the story, the central character Maggie Fitzgerald is sucker-punched onto an overturned stool and disabled.
Hilary Swank plays Maggie’s journey as suitably heartbreaking, starting the movie as an ambitious budding boxer and ending it crushed and defeated, with her hopes dashed.
9 Heath Ledger As The Joker In The Dark Knight
It’s not common for a comic book movie to contain one of the greatest performances of the decade, but Heath Ledger is truly electrifying in the role of the Joker in The Dark Knight. He managed to steal a Batman movie from Batman. Every time he enters a scene, it’s impossible to look away.
Inspired by Malcolm McDowell’s portrayal of Alex DeLarge in Starnley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, Ledger managed to really capture the Joker’s psychopathy and turn him into one of the most iconic villains ever put on screen.
8 Naomi Watts As Betty Elms/Diane Selwyn In Mulholland Drive
Naomi Watts was virtually unknown when David Lynch tapped her to play the dual roles of Betty Elms and Diane Selwyn in his surreal cinematic odyssey Mulholland Drive. She played Betty as a bright-eyed optimist and Diane as a bitter cynic, two sides of the same coin.
It’s not easy to play two characters in one movie, especially a movie that follows loopy dream logic like Mulholland Drive, but Watts managed to immerse herself in the world of this story. Fans have theorized that Betty is Diane’s fantasy of a better life for herself.
7 Philip Seymour Hoffman As Truman Capote In Capote
Philip Seymour Hoffman is one of the finest actors who ever lived, and he managed to put a face to the name Truman Capote in the biopic about the author’s struggle to write his first true crime novel, In Cold Blood.
Capote has a very distinctive voice, and it would’ve been easy for a dramatic portrait of him to veer into mere impression territory, but Hoffman nailed the part.
6 Denzel Washington As Detective Alonzo Harris In Training Day
Denzel Washington scored an Academy Award for his portrayal of Detective Alonzo Harris in Antoine Fuqua’s gritty crime thriller Training Day. The character could’ve easily been a one-note stock character in the hands of a lesser actor, but Washington makes the crooked cop’s motivations feel real.
Throughout the crime movie, he develops a captivating dynamic with his co-star Ethan Hawke, who plays a by-the-book rookie that he wants to corrupt by the end of his first day.
5 Javier Bardem As Anton Chigurh In No Country For Old Men
In the Coens’ masterfully crafted film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, Javier Bardem brings a tangible inhumanity to the role of contract killer Anton Chigurh.
When he speaks to his soon-to-be victims, he’s calm in the face of their terror. When he kills, his eyes are vacant. Bardem played Chigurh as the embodiment of violence and evil, and it was incredibly effective.
4 Charlize Theron As Aileen Wuornos In Monster
Charlize Theron’s transformation into notorious serial killer Aileen Wuornos for Patty Jenkins’ biopic Monster went far beyond the obvious physical changes. Down to her subtle body language tics, Theron becomes Wuornos.
There are no traces of the artifice of acting as Theron truly embodies Wuornos’ murderous mindset and personality disorders and, against all odds, humanizes her.
3 Christoph Waltz As Col. Hans Landa In Inglourious Basterds
Nicknamed “the Jew Hunter” by terrified refugees living in Nazi-occupied Europe, S.S. Colonel Hans Landa is one of the greatest characters ever created by Quentin Tarantino and one of the most sinister villains in film history. As he struggled to find an actor to play Landa right in Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino began to fear that he’d written an uncastable role.
And then he met Christoph Waltz. The actor more than earned his Oscar with a frightfully lifelike portrait of the self-important detective. Waltz steals all his scenes, deftly commanding the screen with a chilling presence the second he enters a room.
2 Jamie Foxx As Ray Charles In Ray
Although he isn’t often appreciated as such, Jamie Foxx is one of the greatest actors working today. For proof of that, look no further than his breathtaking performance as Ray Charles in the biopic Ray. You forget you’re watching an actor playing Ray Charles; in that movie, Jamie Foxx is Ray Charles.
When Chris Rock hosted the Academy Awards, he joked, “Jamie Foxx is so good in Ray that they went to the hospital and unplugged the real Ray Charles. They were like, ‘We don’t need two of these!’”
1 Daniel Day-Lewis As Daniel Plainview In There Will Be Blood
Paul Thomas Anderson made the quintessential American film epic with There Will Be Blood, and gave Daniel Day-Lewis the role of a lifetime with oil baron Daniel Plainview. As expected, Plainview’s greed becomes his downfall, but Day-Lewis’ gripping performance in There Will Be Blood makes the familiar corruption arc feel fresh.
Day-Lewis’ accent and quotable lines like “I drink your milkshake!” are what people remember from his performance, but he conveys more of the character’s descent into madness non-verbally than he does with spoken dialogue.
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